Within the past few years, there has been a renewed interest in traditional roles, and not only among Christians. There are certainly downsides to the “trad wife” phenomenon and the red pill movement in their distortions and commodification of traditional roles, but they are clearly fulfilling a present hunger for the natural order realities that feminist assumptions helped undermine in our social fabric. To this I say good, but I also wish to present a word of caution.
Patriarchy, or the leadership of fathers, is the natural state of things because God wired men to rule in unique ways, including their strength (1 Peter 3:7), boldness (1 Corinthians 16:13), and aggression (Deuteronomy 3:18–19). Technology may provide the illusion that these qualities are unnecessary, but this mirage has dissipated, especially during clashes between advanced Western societies and Islamic patriarchal societies. Western societies need to reject feminism and male passivity for their own survival, but the kind of patriarchy they develop as an alternative doesn’t matter.
Paternalistic Patriarchy
The civilization that conquered the modern world was a monogamous, Christian civilization built upon the idea of self-mastery, accountability, and personal responsibility. In short, the kind of patriarchy that built the West, and more specifically inspired the creation of the Anglosphere with its familial settlements and Protestant religious character, was a paternalistic form of patriarchy. This may seem redundant. After all, patriarchy implies fatherhood, not simply maleness. The Muslim world, with its high birthrates, understands this. The neo-pagan flavor taking root in some quarters of the Right does not.
Bronze Age Pervert, one of the most prominent modern voices for Nietzschean vitalism with its emphasis on the conquering male rather than the domestic male, sees glorious dominion as an end in itself rather than a means to preserve civilization and attain heavenly reward. From his perspective, starting a family is optional and contains potential disadvantages to the point that “usually a family is the end of a man” because of the emotional and financial demands that “blind him to anything higher” (75). If men do marry, they should not treat their wife as a best friend, and best friends are more important than wives (BAM 54, 105).
For those unfamiliar, BAP helped popularize terms like “trash world,” “fake and gay,” and “based,” which have become staples of the dissident Right. This does not mean that people who use these terms endorse all of Costin Alamariu’s views (his real name), or are even aware of them, but he has nonetheless had a significant influence.
What he, and now many others who see Christianity as weak or fungible, lack in their pursuit of maleness is the paternal quality that made our civilization great. The West’s rejection of polygamy allowed men to channel their energy into one unique wife and set of children secured through loyalty, and lacking the conflict the “Cinderella effect” produces as houses are divided according to separate lineages. Strong families make strong civilizations.
Strong paternalistic societies were able to handle social dysfunction by absorbing it into the domain of the family, church, and local community, where natural connections were formed through charity and stand-in moms and dads. Eugene Genevose, perhaps America’s greatest historian on Antebellum Southern Slavery, observed that Christians in the Old South saw themselves as inheriting a social duty to Christianize their slaves and treat them with general kindness in contrast to emerging Northern industrialism, which treated men more as cogs in machines (A Consuming Fire, 121). Genovese does not whitewash the abuses connected with slavery or wish its return, but he does show how a Christian devotion to what they saw as the ideal “Abrahamic household,” minus polygamy, of course, tempered the institution as Christian fathers saw their responsibility to provide, guide, and protect their community in personal ways that modern statists have trouble understanding.
More Based Than Jefferson Davis
Recently, I witnessed Pastor Alex Kocman get excoriated on X for a picture he posted of himself and his adopted thirteen-year-old son, who happens to be black. Many of the responses were predictable. Kocman was weak in extending love to a child from another background. Some even blamed his Christianity. Speaking of the Antebellum South, though, I thought of James Limber, whom Jefferson Davis, the President of the Confederacy, treated as a son for over a year until Union Troops took him at the end of the War. The story goes that Limber was a free black around 5-7 years old, beaten and left in the streets, where Varina Davis found him crying.
The question I have for those implying Kocman was weak is whether they are more “based,” “right-wing,” or “masculine” than the President of the Confederacy? Was he, like Kocman, a sop for needy black boys, willing to nurture them to gain points with his wife or a broader liberal society? Would any of them be willing to stand in the gap left by Kocman’s son’s biological father to keep the boy from growing up the way many do under such circumstances and becoming a social drain in the process? What Kocman did is an example of more than patriarchy. It is a particular kind of patriarchy that is paternal.
Actually Solving the Problem
I recently read Cass Sunstein’s book Why Nudge?: The Politics of Libertarian Paternalism, which argues for a social architecture that simultaneously allows us to make free choices while directing us toward healthier ends. For example, a school cafeteria could prominently display fruit while putting fries to the side. This is a substitute for the kind of paternalism that built the West, though. It is more of a soft nanny state, marketed as paternalism. In a paternal setting, fathers are still in charge, take responsibility for those within their domain, and raise up mature adults capable of decision-making themselves.
To solve a problem like inner-city crime, for example, it is necessary to disincentivize fatherless homes through welfare reform, increase policing where fathers are absent, and foster conditions where employers and pastors are able to take on paternal roles without threatening their own families. It would take many moving parts, the first of which would involve the government doing its job, which is not likely to happen under democratic mechanisms in these regions. All that seems to happen over time is the can gets kicked down the road as money is thrown at managing the problem through things like education and social services, but never actually solving the problem.
I bring this example up because it is often associated with a “white savior” complex, paternalistic Western societies have created, wherein more dysfunctional populations are reliant on them. But, a question is worth asking, “What other civilizations sense a duty to help those who are different and leave them better than they found them?” If anything, that is an anomaly in the history of the world, as conquering peoples destroy and plunder those they are able to subdue.
What Conquered the World
There is something special in the West, where Christianity has been allowed to cultivate a sense of duty to a higher law that tells men to consider others as more important than themselves. Where they attempt to follow the role model of Jesus, who exercised meekness instead of brute power, though he was stronger than any man before Him or since His ascension. Where husbands live with their wives in understanding ways without harshness and invest in them the way they do their own bodies (Ephesians 5:25–33, Colossians 3:19, 1 Peter 3:7). Where children are not to be exasperated, but cultivated under patient teaching (Ephesians 6:4).
It may not be the James Bond style existence that occupies the dreams of adolescent boys, though I will give Daniel Craig the benefit of breaking that mold and showing that even Bond was incomplete without a family. It certainly is not the Andrew Tate example of self-gratification leading to lifting weights on Christmas Eve alone, while the paternalistic fathers are enjoying their wives and children.
But it is what built the West. It is what conquered the World. And it is what will be our downfall if we lose it.
We are not simply Patriarchal. We are Paternal.
